While Napoleon was passing through the death struggle at Longwood, the sixty thousand men who had fallen on the field of Waterloo were quietly rotting, and something of their peace was shed abroad over the world.
The Congress of Vienna made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called this the Restoration.
This is what Waterloo was.
But what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud, that war, then that peace?
All that darkness did not trouble for a moment the light of that immense Eye before which a grub skipping from one blade of grass to another equals the eagle soaring from belfry to belfry on the towers of Notre Dame.
BOOK FIRST.-WATERLOO
CHAPTER XIX
THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
Let us return--it is a necessity in this book--to that fatal battle-field.
On the 18th of June the moon was full.
Its light favored Blucher''s ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the massacre.
Such tragic favors of the night do occur sometimes during catastrophes.
After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean remained deserted.﹌本﹌作﹌品﹌由﹌思﹌兔﹌網﹌提﹌供﹌線﹌上﹌閱﹌讀﹌
The English occupied the encampment of the French; it is the usual sign of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their bivouac beyond Rossomme.